


Lost Focus

by kakkoweeb



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, HQ Rare Pair Exchange 2017, M/M, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Water, idk lmao i'm so bad with tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 15:33:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10028474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kakkoweeb/pseuds/kakkoweeb
Summary: Picture this: an ordinary school day at Aoba Johsai High School, approximately three fifteen in the afternoon—Kyoutani Kentarou stands in the middle of the hallway, frozen solid and staring wide-eyed at one Iwaizumi Hajime, drenched from head to toe, face swimming with regret and, at the same time, a defeated sort of acceptance. A decent crowd gathers around them, dead silent, petrified, three of the boys in the crowd looking like they’re about to wet themselves.And the only thing Kyoutani can think iswho fucks up this badly?





	

**Author's Note:**

> written for the hq rarepair exchange 2017 event.
> 
> for [conflicted-in-wonderland](http://conflicted-in-wonderland.tumblr.com/)

Picture this: an ordinary school day at Aoba Johsai High School, approximately three fifteen in the afternoon—Kyoutani Kentarou stands in the middle of the hallway, frozen solid and staring wide-eyed at one Iwaizumi Hajime, drenched from head to toe, face swimming with regret and, at the same time, a defeated sort of acceptance. A decent crowd gathers around them, dead silent, petrified, three of the boys in the crowd looking like they’re about to wet themselves.

And the only thing Kyoutani can think is _who fucks up this badly?_

 

* * *

 

In reality, if we were to trace the origin of the entire hallway fiasco, the trail would lead us to the same day, still at Aoba Johsai High School, at about eight in the morning inside third year classroom five. Iwaizumi Hajime sits by his desk, uneasily blinking at his long-time friend and constant headache, Oikawa Tooru, who’d come into the room just minutes ago declaring that he had important matters to talk about before pulling up a random chair and setting it in front of Iwaizumi. His serious face and his hands, folded neatly against each other on top of the table, make Iwaizumi want to rise and head back home.

“So,” Oikawa starts, his odd demeanour never wavering, “word on the street is one of our precious volleyball kouhai is going to get badly pranked later this afternoon. Very badly. So bad it might tarnish his entire reputation and have him moving out of the prefecture.”

Iwaizumi opens his mouth, takes wary glances at his classmates who seem to be studying what the fuck he and Oikawa are doing in the middle of the room, looking like a cop and a suspect in the middle of an interrogation, and closes it again. “Right,” he manages, still unsure what to make of anything that’s taking place or any of the information he’s being fed. He plays along anyway. “And who is this kouhai?”

“Kyoutani Kentarou, alias mad dog-chan.”

Ignoring the use of the word ‘alias’, Iwaizumi narrows his eyes. “And who told you about this prank?”

“Oh, you know. A little bird.”

“That little bird better be in his right mind and wearing our school uniform, Oikawa.”

“Iwa-chan, I can’t believe you doubt me,” says Oikawa, though he continues to talk like some sort of employer, dispatching a secret agent to accomplish a highly important, top secret mission. Iwaizumi wants to punch his regular behaviour back out of him. “There is no way I would joke about something as serious as this. I care about the well-being of every single member of our club and, as vice-captain, so should you. Now, I’m seriously—from the bottom of my heavy heart—telling you that Kyoutani is in harm’s way and that the harm will very thoroughly get to him this afternoon if we do nothing.”

“Well, what do you want _me_ to do about it?”

“Your mission, if you choose to accept it,” Oikawa says, and Iwaizumi really wants to take this seriously, he really does, because even without being vice-captain he cares about Kyoutani too, will gladly help him out of whatever prank any asshole tries to spring on him, but as it is he _really_ hates the way Oikawa is talking right now, “is to make sure that mad dog-chan leaves school today, unscathed, un-pranked, and completely satisfied in life.”

He figured as much, but he finds himself unable to ‘accept’ his ‘mission’ and simply settles for giving the self-proclaimed agent boss _whatever_ that is his best friend a sceptical glare.

For once, Oikawa successfully glares back. “Come on now, you care about mad dog-chan, right?” he asks, cocking his head to the side. “You don’t want him ridiculed in front of the entire student population, do you?”

No, Iwaizumi doesn’t. Kyoutani isn’t vocal unless he’s yelling and was barely even around for a time, but he matters to Iwaizumi just as much as everyone else does. He’s simply different, simply misunderstood, and though he can be rude and temperamental, he doesn’t deserve any sort of ridicule. Not from random people with nothing better to do with their lives, anyway. He grunts in response.

“Keep an eye out for him today,” Oikawa continues, sensing his agreement. “If you do, I guarantee you’ll reach enlightenment.”

His face is still completely serious and, once again, Iwaizumi becomes incredulous. “What do you mean ‘enlightenment’?”

“Iwa-chan, Iwa-chan—“ He really wants to punch him “—everyone knows that completing missions get young paladins experience points and, if you’re lucky, pieces of ancient wisdom.”

“I am not a _paladin,_ Oikawa, and you are _ridiculous.”_

“It’s not the metaphor that counts; it’s the message _behind_ the metaphor,” says Oikawa, lightly brushing him off with several airy waves of the hand. And then, for the first time today, he smiles. “I’m counting on you, Iwa-chan. Kyoutani’s fate rests in your hands.”

When he finally gets up and leaves, Iwaizumi feels his blood pressure hitting an all-time high.

 

It’s not something Iwaizumi will normally take seriously; he is the epitome of composure and Oikawa, with his talk of missions and experience points, has always been eighty per cent nonsense, one per cent sincerity, and two hundred per cent absolute trash. But for some reason, as he goes about his day, Iwaizumi feels apprehensive. He glances at the door during class, half-expecting shadows of scheming boys whispering amongst each other passing through. A single foot dances endlessly, his shin banging in rhythm against the leg of his chair, and he stops it every time he catches it but catching it every two minutes becomes so tedious he elects to ignore it altogether.

When the fourth period teacher exits the classroom and leaves them all waiting for the next class to start, Iwaizumi leans over to the desk behind him. “Do you know any pranks that might cause someone to leave the prefecture?”

His classmate shoots him a confused look, but she stares at the ceiling and hums, regardless. “Well, I don’t know about moving out of the prefecture, but have you ever heard of Kancho? Like, someone’ll kind of put their fingers together, like a gun, and then they’ll stick their pointer finger up your—“

The fifth period teacher loudly announces his presence and Iwaizumi turns and faces the chalkboard once again—feet, hands, lungs not moving.

 

It’ll be an exaggeration to say that he’s hysterical by the time lunch rolls around, but he does find himself dropping his regular break routine with Oikawa—a routine just so _routine_ it might as well be set in stone—in favour of leisurely (sort of) strolling around the school, looking for any suspicious activity; perhaps students snickering, dragging along out-of-place paraphernalia, arranging some sort of elaborate set-up in a secluded corner of the halls, but he finds nothing of the sort.

What he does find is Kyoutani.

He’s out in the schoolyard by himself, sitting underneath a tree with a bun in his hand and a box of juice waiting on the ground by his knee. Music is plugged into his ears but he’s completely still, eyes fixated on a book he holds in the hand that doesn’t hold the food, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration even as he slowly chews.

This is his first time seeing Kyoutani outside the court, Iwaizumi realizes—the court where releases all his wild and brusque and intense, the court which represents only a single side of him, only a single part of his daily life. And what he sees is interesting, definitely, because the sight of Kyoutani running up at balls to hit and knocking into other players as he carelessly does so is completely different from the sight of him sitting calmly under the shadow of leaves and branches, completely separating himself from reality and immersing himself in whatever universe his book creates around him.

It almost puts Iwaizumi at peace himself. He finds himself crossing his arms and leaning against a nearby wall and watching.

Kyoutani doesn’t do much else for a while—that is, until an opportunistic cat saunters towards him, eyeing his lunch. He doesn’t hear it mewling at first but when he does, he doesn’t hesitate to set his book down, open on the grass, and use his now-free hand to lure it to move closer. The cat does, and Kyoutani doesn’t move away when it comes in for a sniff; he waits patiently as it rubs its face against his fingers, and he moves his hand to softly scratch at its chin.

He doesn’t flinch when it springs off of the grass and onto his lap, though he does cringe at his fallen juice box, and Iwaizumi smiles as he lets it be in favour of stroking his new friend gently in between the ears and then running his hand across the expanse of its spine. He does this a few more times, and though Iwaizumi isn’t a cat person, he knows it must be satisfying to curry one’s favour because he sees the corner of Kyoutani’s mouth twitch upward, ever so slightly, as the cat purrs against him.

An interesting sight, indeed. _Very_ interesting.

So interesting he almost doesn’t hear the bell ringing, signalling the end of break, but when he does he turns on his heel and briskly walks until he’s out of sight, back in his building, before he realizes he’s neglected, during a lunch break, to get himself anything even close to a lunch.

 

He forgets about the prank for a long while, sits in class for the next few hours replaying the almost too-pleasant imagery of Kyoutani’s gentle handling of animals, finding himself wondering what it would feel like to be a cat in that situation—until he catches himself like a shaky leg and hides his face behind his English book, hoping his nose isn’t flushing darker than usual. He can’t believe he hasn’t properly listened to any lecture since first period, but more than that, he can’t believe he’s daydreaming. _Daydreaming._ About Kyoutani and cats. It sounds like a scenario only Oikawa (and a bunch of cheesy girls, probably) could think up, and he really wants to want to retch at the idea, but somehow, it doesn’t feel as disgusting as it should.

From behind his book, he delivers a discreet flick to his own forehead. It does nothing.

For the rest of the day he’s distracted like never before, for once unable to channel his innate, well-focused, perceptive powers—and instead, finds his thoughts wandering where they shouldn’t, though he doesn’t understand why. He feels uneasy somehow, like something major in his life has just been shaken like a snow globe and left to deal with the aftermath of the crazy flurry of snow. When his final class ends, he heads out of the room as he usually does, heads to the lockers as per usual, his eyes looking at everything but unable to see anything with his mind too preoccupied to process any thoughts that come from external stimuli.

But this is ridiculous, he thinks, and so he screws his eyes shut and desperately tries to snap himself out of whatever trance he’s been in all day, because nothing good is going to come out of him floating into unseen territory and walking down the hallway at the same time.

And that’s when he sees it.

 _It_ is actually a strange combination of several different objects and people. The first component is a group of boys—three of them, all second year benchwarmers of the volleyball club, huddled and hidden behind the wall of a turn in the hallway, whispering amongst each other despite the noise that’ll otherwise filter their words anyway. They look nervous, far too nervous to be up to anything good, and when Iwaizumi sees them, he stops in his tracks and has to blink a sense of purpose back into his mind.

The second is a very inconspicuous string. It’s thin but gleams in the light, just feet away from where Iwaizumi stands and recalculates his entire day, and at first glance it looks as though it’s on the ground but Iwaizumi knows better. He’s sure, absolutely, that it’s currently and very deliberately hovering inches above the floor, waiting for the first unsuspecting fool with feet that might walk past and stumble upon it, waiting with an objective.

The third is Kyoutani, one hand in his pocket, eyes glued to a phone, casually making his way closer and closer and _closer_ to the waiting string.

That’s when Iwaizumi loses control over all his impulses.

“Kyoutani, _wait!”_

And _that’s_ when the string fulfils its purpose.

 

* * *

 

Now we’re back here, three fifteen in the afternoon, Kyoutani standing with every muscle in his body effectively freezing over, thinking long and hard about what kind of _idiot_ would even think to pull such an amateurish prank on one of the most respectable third years in the history of sports and third years. Iwaizumi is—without a doubt—wet, and a rumpled-up sheet of plastic sits cleanly atop of his flattened hair. His eyes are shut, relaxed, but he’s biting his lip and flexing his fingers, curling them every now and again to form very driven fists, and his inhales and exhales are audible.

Kyoutani feels a nervousness building up inside him.

“Are you _fucking kidding me?”_ he finally says, and more than half of their audience either jumps or recoils, half of that half turning away in the hope of keeping their lives. Kyoutani himself stiffens as Iwaizumi finally opens his eyes, looking up at the ceiling like it’s just cost him the lottery. “ _This_ is the prank _so bad_ it’s going to tarnish someone’s reputation and kick them out of the prefecture?”

More and more people slowly start to back away, but along with them flees Kyoutani’s initial apprehension. He furrows his eyebrows at Iwaizumi. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m going to murder Oikawa; _that’s_ what I’m talking about,” he spits out, glancing at Kyoutani and then away—and then abruptly at Kyoutani again, his eyes this time fixed on Kyoutani’s face. Water (at least, Kyoutani hopes it’s water) drips from the ends of his hair down to his face, making his tanned skin glisten in the hallway light, and Kyoutani swallows as he seems to consciously fix himself. He stands properly, places an arm back at his side while the other moves to quickly extract the material clinging to his head and move it out of sight.

He almost looks nervous, and Kyoutani can’t help but think it odd—but also strangely refreshing. No pun intended.

“Uh, sorry,” Iwaizumi starts. “This probably looks really weird, but I can explain. I think.”

Kyoutani doesn’t doubt this, but before any explaining can begin, three terrified faces are running toward them, hands outstretched but far too stiff to reach out and touch anything—especially not the currently angry, currently soaking wet Iwaizumi.

“Iwaizumi-san, oh god, we’re so sorry,” one of them cries, looking nothing short of horrified. At once, Iwaizumi’s presence—large and dominant but not overbearing, a presence that Kyoutani has come to admire—once again grows, and he glowers at the trembling mess of a boy, practically in the middle of a confession that might just cost him his life. “That wasn’t meant for you, it was—“

He isn’t able to finish when he gets thoroughly nudged by his accomplice; he takes a breath, seals his lips tightly together—and dares to steal a glance at Kyoutani.

This is his first and final mistake.

"Huh?" is the only thing Kyoutani has to say before the boys before him pathetically whimper and back away from the sheer intensity of his gaze. He has his own sort of presence, he figures, and to see it standing right next to the looming figure of Iwaizumi Hajime must not be easy (or a very good sign, for that matter) because he's never seen regular high school students look so full of regret.

From the corner of his eye, Kyoutani sees Iwaizumi glance at him, and he locks their gazes together—the establishing of an unspoken, mutual agreement that they're ready and willing to give _hell_ to anyone who had a hand in this ridiculous affair.

"Wait! We're really sorry!" one of the volleyball players cry as both Iwaizumi and Kyoutani take a single step towards them. He stumbles backward with his friends. "We didn't want to do it in the first place! We were just under orders, I swear!"

"Yeah? Under orders from who?" Iwaizumi challenges.

If it's even possible, the look on the boy's face only becomes more horrified. "O—Oikawa-san's!"

Everything in that moment seems to stop, the silence weighing heavy in Kyoutani's ears. He's not surprised that the gaudy captain has given his underlings such a ridiculous, nonsensical task, and neither is Iwaizumi—but he's far from happy. He nods slowly, almost too peacefully, like that one moment of quiet before a bomb goes off. "Okay," he says patiently. "And because you told me the truth, I'm going to give you five seconds to run ahead before we come after you. One—"

The boys don't need five seconds. They flee immediately, shoving, screaming.

"Two. Three. Four." Iwaizumi and Kyoutani glance at each other once more. "Five."

But the five seconds mean absolutely nothing.

 

* * *

 

A mere five minutes later, both Iwaizumi and Kyoutani are inside the males' restroom near the gym, Iwaizumi having gotten himself a towel from his locker, now drying himself with it. Kyoutani, meanwhile, isn't sure if it's the right decision to have stuck around, but there are some things he wants to know, things he wants to ask, and so after too long a silence for two people who had just laid waste to three pushovers, he starts with:

"What was that all about?"

Iwaizumi, brushing the towel against his mop of a hair, stops for a good second. "Oh," he says, "it's just—a classic case of Oikawa being stupid. No, actually a really rare case because this is an entirely new level, even for him." He moves to put the towel next to his drenched blazer; Kyoutani almost laughs at how mussed-up his hair is until Iwaizumi starts undoing the buttons to his shirt. He tenses instead of laughing. "But basically, this morning he came into my classroom and told me you were going to get really badly-pranked this afternoon and that it's my job to prevent it from happening, or something. He was talking like some weird secret agent and everything."

The mental image isn't difficult to conjure or believe, and Kyoutani makes a face as Iwaizumi continues. "I wasn't entirely sure if it was serious or not, but I did keep my eye out all day. He said it was gonna be big enough to get you to move out of the prefecture, but—well." He sighs out. "This isn't the first time he's extremely exaggerated something. And now I find out that it was all his doing? I swear to god, I'll kill him."

He'd deserve it, Kyoutani thinks briefly, but all at once his focus centres on all of one thing: "Wait," he says, watching as Iwaizumi shrugs his shirt off and places it on the sink counter. Iwaizumi blinks at him. "You kept your eye out all day for people trying to prank me?"

Again, Iwaizumi freezes. "...yeah?"

"You went through all that trouble so I wouldn't get wet?"

"Well, I didn't _really_ know you were just going to get wet, but...yeah."

It's probably nothing ( _probably nothing)_ but Kyoutani can feel the tips of his ears starting to warm. He knits his eyebrows together. "Why?"

Iwaizumi looks as though it's a question he'd ask himself. He looks away from Kyoutani, down at his hand resting on the surface of the counter, and noncommittally shrugs. The skin of his face is a different shade. "Eh," he says. "You didn't deserve it."

The reason is as good as any, but Kyoutani isn't entirely convinced just yet. "So why couldn't you have just warned me about it?" he asks.

And that— _that—_ is the moment Iwaizumi's brain becomes a blue screen of death.

From Kyoutani's point of view, he looks like he's about to have a heart attack: eyes wide and unblinking and glassy but staring at nothing within the physical realm, lips slightly parted as if he wants to give an answer but has no answer to give, clutching the countertop like doing otherwise will send him careening down towards the floor. Kyoutani's seen the look on him before, usually when somebody (his rambunctious fellow third years, mostly) has done something incredibly stupid or indescribably unexplainable, inexplicably indescribable, what have you, but he's not sure why it's come to surface now. He cocks his head a little, tries to see into Iwaizumi's mind through his eyes.

And if he'd succeeded in doing that, he'd have seen this:

 _"Why didn't I just warn him"? Why_ didn't _I just warn him? Kyoutani can handle himself, he doesn't need anyone protecting him from stupid pranks or Oikawa's orders, and a warning would have sufficed. Then you wouldn't have gotten wet and you wouldn't be standing in the bathroom with him while you look like a loser with only half the uniform on—what's he going to think of you now? You idiot. You absolute idiot. You saw him at lunch petting that cat, how could you_ not _have thought to warn him about it then, you're so_ stupid—

And this:

_Fuck, fuck, fuck.  Fuck._

Along with this pathetic, internal monologue, Iwaizumi’s entire day seems to flash before his eyes, playing in his head like a black-and-white film with terrible audio quality. He sees Oikawa before him, speaking like a man giving out riddles, talking of 'enlightenment' and 'ancient wisdom'. He sees himself, seated in class but present anywhere _but_ class, his leg shaking incessantly. He sees himself during lunch, forgetting lunch, watching instead as Kyoutani indulges a feline companion and feeling pretty damn satisfied. He sees himself in class again, hiding himself behind a book because he might be _blushing_ and absolutely no one can see that. He sees himself after school, completely losing his composure and triggering a string-trap of watery death just so Kyoutani doesn't have to.

And finally, he sees himself here, in the bathroom with Kyoutani, attaining enlightenment in the exact manner Oikawa had told him he would.

What is so enlightening about all this, you ask?

Well, now he knows Kyoutani is pretty damn distracting, pretty damn interesting.

Slowly, his blue screen of death starts flickering back to life, and he's able to briefly glance at Kyoutani before resuming the rest of his drying. He sees the reflection of Kyoutani's face in the mirror, changing from just plain confused to very impatiently confused and he can't help his short, nervous laugh. "Uh," he tries, wringing his shirt free of all the water it's collected, "I don't really know either. Guess I lost focus."

Kyoutani's expression doesn't exactly change from here, though by the time he finishes drying and manages to put a clean, extra shirt on, he finds it's mellowed down. Iwaizumi's never had a reason to stand this close to him before, to stand alone with him before in an isolated room, and it might just be the insanity of today's events talking but he finds he really likes it. Kyoutani is sort of cute, both in the way he idly traces patterns on his own crossed arms as he waits, settles his face in a small, non-deliberate pout all the while, and the way he sneaks glances when he thinks Iwaizumi isn't looking. He looks _good_ , Iwaizumi admits to himself, though out in public eye that's not very easy to see, because you can easily get distracted by his hair or the blacks under his eyes or the way he snarls when something doesn't go his way on the court.

He wouldn't have known all of this had Oikawa not sent him on this wild goose chase. And though the 'wild' in that statement is to a thousand degrees annoying, he supposes it's something to be grateful for, that he knows all of this now.

But he wants to know _more._

So, when he's just about finished dressing and ready to head out, he takes a breath and looks at Kyoutani, who stares back. "You wanna go get something warm to drink?" he asks as casually as he can, ignoring whatever is dancing around in his stomach. "It's good for after you get wet, so you don't catch colds."

Kyoutani looks surprised by the invitation, but it's not all that bad; not when Iwaizumi is able to watch his cheeks flush slightly pink and his entire body seem to shrink into itself. "But I'm not wet," he mumbles, gaze flitting away.

That's true, but Iwaizumi's always been a make-do kind of guy. He stands still for a while before reaching over to turn the faucet knob, running his hands through the water falling from the taps—and then he's abruptly splashing Kyoutani with it, trying to keep from grinning too wide as Kyoutani flinches, grunts, and makes faces as he wipes away droplets of water from his eyes.

"Now you are," he says simply.

This is the perfect time for Kyoutani to get angry, Iwaizumi thinks, and so he doesn’t speak when Kyoutani’s glare sharpens and his frown pulls deeper. But then, all at once, all the tightness in his muscles seems to drop and he’s letting out a defeated sigh that sounds so exasperated it might have caused Iwaizumi to regret what he’s just done—if not for the evident pink splotches crawling down Kyoutani’s neck. “Where?” he asks, head tilted low, eyes steadily blinking up at Iwaizumi from under his lashes.

Iwaizumi smiles, figures he’s finally going to regain his focus on _something_ this afternoon. “We’ll figure it out on the way.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

On a faraway side of the school, Oikawa stands, examining his nails next to three boys drenched from head to toe. They are shaking water out of their ears and hair; one of them takes off a shoe and ends up creating a miniature pond on the ground.

“Oikawa-san, you said they weren’t going to get violent,” one of them whines.

“No, I said they _might_ not get violent,” Oikawa pointedly clarifies. “There’s a big difference. But anyway, it all turned out according to plan, right? They’re happy, you got off without sustaining any major injuries, and once again, I am the brilliant mastermind to a completely successful endeavour, so all’s good.” In all his stupor, he doesn’t notice the three exchange nervous stares. “You three did well. You’re now officially exempted from running laps for the next week of practice.”

“Uh, about that,” one of them says, putting his shoe back on should he need to start running again. “Iwaizumi-san and Kyoutani are both really scary, so um—we kind of…ratted you out.”

Before them, Oikawa goes completely still, and then he bites his lip and takes a deep, panic-induced breath. “I take it back; you three are running extra for the next two weeks,” he snaps, hurriedly slinging his bag on his shoulder and walking away. “Now if anyone asks, I’ve left the country.”

**Author's Note:**

> it's oikawa. _oikawa_ fucks up this badly.
> 
>  
> 
> [never gonna give you up never gonna let you down](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kakkoweeb/profile)


End file.
